TIM SHAW: I'm pleased to say Angus Taylor Minister for Energy and member for Hume joins me now. Minister, good morning.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Good morning Tim, thanks for having me.

TIM SHAW: Great small business here in Mitchell, Pure Gelato - I bet they're paying a fortune for their energy.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Yes they sure are. Zoltan and his family there, it's a family-run business, a fantastic little business, right near where you are Tim, and they do a brilliant job. Of course they produce gelato and they have to keep it at minus-25 degrees. You go into their refrigeration area and it is extraordinary how much energy it's drawing in order to keep the gelato in the state that needs to be in, and then they transport it all, all across the region including in my electorate down to the south coast as well and Monaro. So fantastic business but their power bills are really hurting them. We're seeing this right across Australia - households and small businesses, as well as big businesses that employ a lot of people.

TIM SHAW: Well I've got one business and I won't name them, they had $1 million a year electricity bill. They had to renegotiate after a five-year period where they got some good deals. They're now paying $1.6 million for the same energy supply - a major business here in Canberra. What kind of impact on Pure Gelato - have they had to pass on those massive energy increases onto their customers or are they consuming it? Because you've got to be competitive on your ice cream, you can't pass it on.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Yes and this is a problem for small businesses - they don't have much pricing power so they have to absorb these costs. This is the problem and it's why we're acting. There has been some very bad behaviour in this energy market, both at the retail level, in the way companies have dealt with customers as well as down at the wholesale level, the way the market works and the generation of electricity works and we're hitting this in every area. So we're saying to the retailers we expect the loyalty tax to go. This has been a big one where customers who roll over their contracts, household and small business - a lot of small businesses because they don't have time, they just let their contracts roll over from year to year - they get slugged with a tax for being loyal.

TIM SHAW: Yes.

ANGUS TAYLOR: That tax has gone up substantially in the last four years. So we're saying to the energy companies no more, that's got to stop. We're bringing in a big stick legislation package, we're calling it, which is a series of interventions that can be made by the Treasurer and the ACCC for bad behaviour. For instance, if they don't pass on to their customer's reductions in the underlying cost of electricity which are coming through now, they need to pass that on. Thirdly, we've got to have enough supply Tim, and this is a real challenge for us as we go through the next couple of years. We've got a lot of intermittent solar and wind coming in. So that's good for emissions reduction but it's a real challenge for keeping the lights on and keeping prices down. So we've got to have that baseload power that's there when customers need it - enough of that, the right balance in the system - and we'll have a short list of projects, big energy generator projects - not the big companies, we want the smaller players coming into the market - a shortlist of projects that we've prepared to back early in the new year to increase supply, to make sure we've got enough power to keep the lights on and keep prices down.

TIM SHAW: Alright, what do you say to your critics of the Morrison Government's energy policy? That there's no energy policy - well you've dispelled that myth. Number two - the continued subsidies for renewables. Now Andy Vesey's gone back to America. He's taken his AGL bonus. They had $264 million of federal government subsidy in their profits in this past year. It's the big companies that have profited from this. How will you encourage smaller operators to be competitive? Do you need to subsidise them, particularly if they're looking at alternate or more importantly clean coal energy generation?

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well we certainly need new supply coming into the market with new players - there's no doubt about that - and that's why we're putting this short list of projects together. Expressions of interest in the next couple of weeks. There's a lot of projects out there that I've been talking to the proponents over recent weeks, good projects that aren't going to be under the control of the big energy companies. We need those coming into the market and shaking up the market. We know that works and there's a lot of good projects out there, Tim. You talked about the subsidies - they're coming off. Labor want to increase them. We want to allow those subsidies to run off over the next couple of years. You know, there's lots of people out there with solar on their roofs and that's great. The good news is the technology now is getting so cheap, it doesn't need subsidies like it used to.

TIM SHAW: No. No.

ANGUS TAYLOR: So those subsidies are coming off and they should come off. That means that we will get the right balance in the market, and that's what we need. I mean, we don't want to push all the coal out tomorrow because we'll all be paying through our noses for the price of electricity if that happens. Too much of that has happened already with Hazelwood in Victoria, and Northern in South Australia. We've got to keep that baseload power in the system. As I say, the subsidies coming off will help to achieve that, but we are determined to make sure we have enough of that supply, that baseload supply in the system.

TIM SHAW: Alright, and if Labor is elected we're facing 50 per cent renewable energy, 45 per cent emission reduction. What impact will that have on Australian power bills if the Shorten opposition are elected?

ANGUS TAYLOR: It will make the carbon tax back a few years ago which we took away - it will make it look like a rounding error. It will be several times the cost of that, and we will all pay for it in our power bills.

TIM SHAW: Double the bills? Double our bills, do you think?

ANGUS TAYLOR: It will certainly have a huge impact on the wholesale market. It will probably double the wholesale market and every customer has different pricing so I'm not going to get into individual customers' pricing. We've seen what happens in South Australia. We've already got an illustration of this where they went for a similar target in South Australia, the Labor government down there that was in power for many, many years until just recently, and the result is South Australia now has the highest energy prices in Australia - 48 cents a kilowatt hour - and they are almost the highest prices in the world. There's only a couple of countries pipping them at the post. Now that's what you get with that Labor policy and they want to do it nationwide, Tim. We will not stand for it.

TIM SHAW: Unbelievable, and the ACT Government glued to that green virtue signalling - 100 per cent renewable energy and 100 per cent neutral emissions. It is just incredible.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Well it's worse than that because they have no plan to firm that up and turn that from intermittent energy into reliable baseload energy that's there when you turn the lights switch on and that simply doesn't work. The truth is that the ACT is relying on all those big baseload generators, mostly coal and gas out there, to keep the lights on in the ACT while they are piggy backing on that, and pretending that they're saving the world but we have to shore up that electricity supply. We are the ones that have to sort that out while the ACT Government goes off gallivanting on its own.

TIM SHAW: Thanks for being there Minister, I appreciate your time.

ANGUS TAYLOR: Thanks Tim